Friday, September 16, 2005

The Rest of the Story

If there was ever a better example of why you have to read several news sources than demonstrated in the contrast between the Memphis Commerical Appeal's coverage of yesterday's District 29 race vs. the coverage by TeamGOP I can't think of it.

From the Commercial Appeal we get:

Election Commission Chairman Greg Duckett said election results were delayed because a voting machine cartridge at Raineshaven Elementary School was not picked up and the building was locked.

"Every election we end up with somebody locking something up in a building," Duckett said.

Sounds like no big deal. Happens all the time. No news here.

But from TeamGOP we get some valuable illumination:

[TeamGOP.org's General Chairman Jeff ] Ward was referring to a troubling development at one heavily Democrat precinct where Roland campaign staffers reported that precinct was one of the few where no poll watchers were present. At the conclusion of the electioning, polling location officers only turned in two of the three voting machine cartridges that tallied the votes with no verifiable paper trail.
Maybe folks in Memphis just innately understood most of that, but from over here in Nashville, I was very glad for the additional information.

Update: more details on the astonishing (and throughly suspicious) win afforded by that one missing cartridge from Simply I via Bob Krumm.

2 comments:

Kay Brooks said...

Is there a rule about who can provide news that I'm unaware of? Perhaps I shouldn't be listening to the neighbor when we discuss the renovations of the Kroger since she doesn't have a journalism degree or own a printing press.

But more importantly, Rusty, was TeamGOP wrong?

Kay Brooks said...

We disagree, Rusty. I think the important question is not the source but the truthfulness of the information. Let me know if TeamGOP was wrong.